Institutional Transformations and Development Projects in the Arctic and the North: Expertise of Human Development Project Examination by Ethnosociologists of the Novosibirsk Scientific Center

The article is devoted to the scientific expertise of human development projects in the North in the late Soviet and early post-Soviet periods of the institutional transformation of Russian society. Despite the fact that its official goal was the further development of the Soviet project among the peoples of the North, in essence, the researchers, in alliance with the authorities, searched for a balance between the mobilization (planned) and market strategies for the development of the Arctic and the North. The purpose of the article is to introduce into wide scientific circulation the results of research in the circumpolar zone of the RSFSR, carried out by ethnosociologists of the Novosibirsk Scientific Center (NSC) from 1982 to 1991 and later. The relevance of this work is brought to life by the desire of the state that emerged in 2010 to use market institutions in the implementation of plans for the development of the polar zone of the Russian Federation. This paper presents materials on the activities of the Regional Interdepartmental Commission for the Coordination of Comprehensive Socio-Economic, Medical, Biological and Linguistic Research on the Problems of the Development of the Peoples of the North, established in 1981 on the basis of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The tasks and functions of the Commission are described in detail. Among the key issues of its activities were the problems of labor and employment of the peoples of Siberia, the preservation of the traditional economy and native language, mass education and access to social benefits, the development of transport infrastructure and quality housing. Although the focus of the Commission’s work remained the study of the situation of the indigenous peoples of the North and Siberia, these problems were considered in a wide range of issues of developing the national economy, gaining access to the social benefits of late socialism in the paradigm of ‘the flourishing and rapprochement of nations’. With the liquidation of the Commission in the early post-Soviet period, researchers focused on studying the consequences of radical market reforms in the interethnic communities of the North of Siberia: the archaization of everyday practices, the decline in the living standards of the population, and the revitalization of ethnic self-organization structures. It is concluded that in future ‘northern’ projects, it is necessary to combine the mobilization and market strategies for the development of the Arctic.